Please help to identify chip component on the Steam Deck mainboard

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Steam Deck

Repair, disassembly, and troubleshooting information for the Steam Deck with LCD display, a handheld gaming console made by Valve, released on February 25, 2022. Identified by model number 1010.

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Alex @alex87453

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Posted: Dec 31, 2023

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Please help to identify chip component on the Steam Deck mainboard

Please help to identify chip component on the Steam Deck mainboard. It placed near to the mipi connector under glue drop. It look like 0.87x0.87 mm BGA chip, has 4 ball pin. First pin (marked with white point on the board) connected to mipi-connector (pins 15 and 16), second to the ground. Unfurtunatly, chip was dameged, I can't see mark on the top.

Sorry for the bad photo quality, I'm not get normal microscope yet.

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@alex87453 iFixit doesn't allow linking images in comments, please edit your original post to add the image links.

Dec 31, 2023 by Chris Green

@chrisgreen, now I know that. I'm new here ...

I correct question. Thank you

Dec 31, 2023 by Alex

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@alex87453 iFixit doesn't allow linking images in comments, please edit your original post to add the image links. — Chris Green
@chrisgreen, now I know that. I'm new here ...

I correct question. Thank you — Alex

Chris Green @chrisgreen Rep: 37k 154 91 50 · Answer 1 · 2023-12-31T15:56:54-07:00

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Chris Green @chrisgreen

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Are you referring to the chip at the center of the photo? That looks like a small flash / EEPROM chip in a 4-pin WLCSP package. These come in a number of different physical and storage sizes, but here's one example. If you can precisely measure the package size and BGA pitch you could narrow it down further. Being buried under glue suggests that the designers want to protect the contents of the chip / prevent tamper, which lends further to it likely being a memory device.

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@chrisgreen he means the burnt ic which looks like a mosfet

Dec 31, 2023 by daniel

@tech_ni It looks like the broken piece of the 4-pin flash is laying on top of the PMIC that you located, but I can't really tell from the picture. You shouldn't normally be able to see the 4 balls on the bottom of the flash chip, which leads me to believe it's damaged. Unfortunately, even if the flash chip is replaced its contents are probably lost. Chips like these are sometimes used to store information that is unique to the device (keys, serial number, MAC address, etc...).

Dec 31, 2023 by Chris Green

@chrisgreen i see what you mean i thought that was a burn mark on the mosfet but looks like the over fill of that chip you mentioned, could just be stuck inside it

Dec 31, 2023 by daniel

Thank you Chris Green!

You right, it was small chip in bga package, maybe WLCSP. Sizes 0.87x0.87 mm. Top case damaged, so I can't read marks. Strange, that EEPROM connect to lcd. Can it be some voltage regulator?

Dec 31, 2023 by Alex

It could be a MOSFET or other active device, but it's probably not a voltage regulator. The giveaway is the lack of large capacitors / inductors adjacent to it. I suspect that the connections to the LCD are just power nets that also are used by the LCD also. Do you have any lead on where the other two lines go? If it's an I2C memory device it only needs 4 pins: voltage (VCC), ground (VSS), clock (SCL), and data (SDA). It's also possible that the LCD is on the I2C bus also.

Without schematics or more details about the circuit I can't dig much further. I did some searching to try and figure out what this chip is used for but couldn't find any references to it.

Dec 31, 2023 by Chris Green

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